I thought this would be something interesting to discuss. Among buying discs at yard sales I always strike up a conversation about discs. Some ordered them from catalogs or via stores. I'm too young to ever order one from a catalog, but one story I was told said they'd often have pre-orders for upcoming discs or a 'feeler' put out to see if they could get enough interest in a certain movie or TV show to be produced onto an LD.

For example this Indiana Jones set was canceled and never sold. I believe I heard somewhere that a pre-order of 500 units couldn't even be made... so it was canceled. If that's true or not I have no idea, but it's something I heard and peeked my interest.

So do you have any knowledge or stories about discs that were never released or sold? I think it's very interesting to think of what could have been...

There are plenty of titles on LDDB that were announced but never released. The Dolby Digital THX remastered Indiana Jones Trilogy like you say was announced by eventually cancelled (I have several issues of Widescreen Review and The DVD-Laserdisc Newsletter that have it in the coming attractions list.)

One that isn't listed on LDDB that I remember seeing in a issue of Image Entertainment Coming Soon Catalog is Jean Pierre Melville's Le Samourai starring Alain Delon.

Here are a few that are listed on LDDB:

The Devonsville Terror
Curse of the Voodoo
The Car
Horror of the Blood Monsters

I can probably cull a few more after looking at some my issues of DVD-LD Newletter from around 99-00.

But you are right, they were putting titles in catalogs to see how many pre-orders they'd get before they'd actually press the movie. At least that's what I remember hearing about the Indiana Jones Trilogy. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case for many titles that were announced but never released.

AnimEigo actually ran pre-order drives, for example for Kimagure Orange Road. As I understand it, there was one for Otaku no Video, but that title never "made it".

Here are a couple more I found in DVD-LD Newsletter from November 99 that aren't on lddb:

From Box Office Spectaculars (same company who released Cat in the Brain on LD)
The Beyond
City of the Living Dead
Massacre

From Cult Video (never heard of them--but I don't think they're Cult Epics/Professional Cinemedia as their releases came out in the mid-90s)
New York Ripper
Eaten Alive

From Regents Entertainments (never heard of them, but the other title listed in their Coming Attractions, Free Enterprise, was released by Pioneer)
Hoods

Eaten alive wasnt released in the US. I do however have a copy of it.

Indeed, since this is a thread about titles that were announced but never released

I'm still always surprised that the US didn't get an Indiana Jones Box set like here in the UK and Japan. Does anyone know why it was never released in the US? I would have thought it would have been a great seller.

I could swear I saw an announcement for Aeon Flux LD (the CARTOON, not the movie http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt0111873/) one day somewhere.
Supposedly to come from the same company that also released MTV's Beavis & Butt-Head: the Essential Collection [MLV49691].
Am I imagining things, or does someone else remember that as well?

Quite possible. I remember that video label, a Sony sublabel (I think it was "Renegade Video" or something like that) was releasing "edgy" animation in the mid-to-late 90s on video and LD. They also released the Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie on LD:

Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie

It was laughable that they claimed it was "uncut" when it wasn't, but since they also released a "PG-13" rated hack up on VHS, they could throw a few more frames of footage back in and claim it was "uncut" so long as you never saw the original Japanese version!

But back to "Renegade Video"--among other titles I remember them promoting on the old SFII I used to have were The Head, The Maxx and MTV's Liquid Television.

Why they decided to only go with Beavis and Butthead and SFII on LD is anyone's guess. Maybe those titles didn't sell as well as they'd thought so they axed any other releases on LD?

I find this one a bit odd...
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) [ID4757MC]
Did Image Entertainment even have the rights to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?

They might have had been called up to produce the DTS version of the movie before it was cancelled.

Like when New Line released the inital version of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, but Image released the DTS version.

Image was used as a publishing channel for MCA/Universal DTS releases (hence the ID____MC reference).

http://www.lddb.com/search.php?adv_search=*&adv_reference=ID____MC

Julien

I used to have on pre-order Live & Let Die cav box set like Goldfinger & Thunderball but it never came out, I also remember Mercury Rising DTS to be coming from the DTS wedsite, never made it.

They were going to release all of the James Bond films remastered in the late 90s but only ended up doing two or three of them. I have one of them, The Spy Who Loved Me, which I can easily say would not have been my first choice.

I just purchased a large set of Criterion fliers, catalogs, & order forms. In a late 1988 coming soon list were two titles that jumped out at me, The Last Emperor, and The Manchurian Candidate. I will be posting more about the catalogs later after I've had a chance to scan some of them, but man do I wish those two titles would have come out then.

In those late days of LD, 98/99, disc sales were down so much that they had to do pre-order lists - LD's don't become profitable until they sell about 3,000 copies. So some of the last discs, like "End Of Days" and "Bringing Out The Dead/Sleepy Hollow" had only about 400 pressed - and although sold for standard retail prices, actually cost the studios over $300 EACH to make. That's why LD was dropped so quickly in the US and Paramount dropped AC-3 encoding since it had to be manually synced to the video and took extra time/cost.

LD's cost about $1500 to make a single glass master for one side - and it would take multiple tries - some discs took up to 70 tries before they got an acceptable glass master to make stampers. Once pressed, each side cost $8-13 in press runs of 1000 or so. LD, although originally designed to cost about $1.50 per finished, packaged disc, actually was a very expensive product to manufacture unless HUGE runs were done. Then costs dropped to around $10 or a bit less per finished, packaged disc.

Has anyone or does anyone know anyone who got their hands on a glass master of an LD? Or are those guarded better than the gold in Fort Knox?

The glass masters were just highly polished glass coated with a layer of AZ Photoresist. Once exposed and developed, it was nickel plated to create a master metal piece from which stampers could be made. When the nickel master was separated from the glass master, the photoresist was almost always damaged... And even if it wasn't the resist was always removed so the glass could be reused for making another master. Thus glass masters don't really exist anymore.

Disclord

Very intersting info, may i ask where you got the info on the number of discs made of End Of Days / BOTD / Sleepy Hollow?

Thanks
Edwin

Over the years I've met people online who worked for Pioneer, Imation/3M, WEA and other companies in the LD industry. I also owned stock in Image and got regular reports on disc pre-order numbers and press runs.